Recently Brian and I had a conversation in which he referred back to the time when Josh was small and I had a very difficult struggle with depression.  I had not thought about that part of my life in some time, and got thinking about everything that led up to the day when i finally decided to ask for help.  It’s something that i’ve shared with friends and family, but i’ve never really sat down and written it all out before.

In October 2004, Joshua was born.  Our much-loved and long-awaited baby boy changed our lives forever as he entered the world.  His birth was an amazing experience, although my body needed some time to recover and during that time i started to slide into depression a bit.  I think it was probably what most people would call the baby blues – but it never quite went away.

Even before Josh was born, we knew there was a distinct possibility that we’d be moving… somewhere.  When Josh was 5 weeks old, we left him at home and went to Albany for Brian to candidate at what is now our home church.  When Josh was not quite 3 months old, we were packing the car with cats and baby, saying goodbye to our families,  and moving to Albany to start an entirely different life.  While driving across I-90, we negotiated the sale of our much-loved first home to a couple with a baby on the way who needed more room.  I was still on maternity leave from my amazing job at YRP, and while i enjoyed being at home with Josh, being suddenly in a new city where all of my friends and family were 7 hours away was not easy.  Living in the church apartment, while it made things easy at first, was very isolating for me, and i missed having neighbors and living in a neighborhood.

Finding and moving into our house in Albany helped in some ways – it made me feel like i had a place to call my own, a place where we could put down some roots and become our own little family unit.  However, everybody on our street seemed to be old enough to be my grandparents and i started to feel like connecting was hard. (we do have great neighbors – it was just hard to make connections at first. and we DID find neighbors who are our age and have kids Josh’s age!)  Bit by bit, in answer to prayers that had been going on for months, some younger families began attending our church, providing much needed fellowship with our own age group.

But all along the way, i was having more and more moments where i did not even want to get out of bed and face the day.  Josh was struggling with things that later all made sense, but at the time were confusing and difficult.  I remember leaving him in his crib to cry and sometimes going down into the basement or sitting outside on the front steps, crying, wondering how i was ever going to move past that moment.

In January 2006, when Josh was 1 1/2, i got pregnant again.  We had just decided to start trying again, and after the 2 years it took to get pregnant with Josh i was ecstatic that it had happened so easily.   The morning of my appointment with my new ob to confirm the pregnancy, i lost that baby in an early miscarriage.  That was the beginning of a downward spiral to a very dark place.  As I grieved, Brian did not.  He felt badly for me, but he hadn’t yet begun to form any kind of emotional attachment to that baby and I know he was probably  somewhat mystified at what I was going through.

I began to feel very alone. I wondered what I could change about my life that would make things better, and I did not see a lot of light at the end of a tunnel.  As i grieved that miscarriage, i grieved the life i’d left behind in Toronto, the loss of   family and friends, the job that i had loved for almost 4 years, our first home together.  Everything that i had stuffed down inside me started to come up and out and i was angry and raw. There were times when i began to wonder what life would be like for my family if i was no longer around.  I thank God that my thoughts never turned into action, and never went very far as thoughts either.   I wasn’t a very good wife and mother during this time.

I could not let go of my grief.  I did not WANT to let go of my grief.  I was the only one grieving the loss of my baby, and I think that on some level I felt like if i let go, then that baby would be forever forgotten.

My relationship with God had pretty much tanked.  Although i believed that He was real, and i had a relationship with him, i was starting to think that His interest in my life was distant at best.

Things began to get very bad and in a moment of clarity, i realized that i needed help.  I had prayed for healing, and God had continued to allow me to walk through this very dark path.  I was aware of a family history of depression in my birth family, and wondered if this was what i was battling.  I began to wonder if God’s direction for me was to seek medical help.  It would mean admitting to Brian and to my doctor that i couldn’t do it alone (do you think God was maybe teaching me something here?)… something i had previously only talked about between God and me.

And so it was that in October of 2006, i found myself sitting in my doctor’s office, in tears, describing the thoughts and feelings that were in my head and my heart.